Breaking the language barrier in six months
By Emily Winter
Correspondent for The Capital Times
In skirts and ties, a group of Spanish-speaking Latino adults walked into Neighborhood House at 29 S. Mills St. and lugged tables and chairs into a long, empty room. In a matter of minutes, the pupils unfolded their classroom to get ready for the two-hour challenge that awaited them.
Coming from church, where the service is held in Spanish, the families took a few minutes to adjust to English. The first few sentences came out crisply, but quietly. With anxiously raised shoulders and eager half-smiles, the students introduced themselves in English. After only 15 minutes, the class was speaking basic phrases with confidence.
Usually, 20 to 30 adults show up at the relaxed classroom setting, which allows students to practice English pronunciation and sentence structure for a few hours.
Whether it's a packed house or a sparse classroom of 10, Madison attorney Victor Arellano starts the class by joking with his students and offering them some inspiring words.
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Photo by Derek Montgomery
Jorge Perez and Magda Perez listen to Victor Arellano as he teaches them about employment and applying for jobs.
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"If you practice and practice," Arellano tells his class one Sunday in Spanish, "you can have a conversation with anyone."
So far, his teaching style is working.
Arellano and his paralegal, Cheri Medcalf, have found success in their new Conversational English for Adults program, which aims to break the language barrier for Spanish-speakers in six months.
Medcalf recruited students through word of mouth at her church on Madison's west side.
"When some of (the students) have come to Madison, in the beginning they depended on me a lot," Medcalf said. "I think it's always good for people to have some of their own independence."
Arellano, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico in 1970, said he also wants students to be able to advance in the workplace. In the program's seventh week, students learned how to request and complete job applications.
"I'm trying to keep parents from depending on young children for translation. Children are growing up way too fast. They are being denied childhood because they know their parents are relying on them," Arellano said.
Officially, there are around 20,000 Latinos in Dane County, and they account for roughly 4 percent of Madison's population, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. Many observers say the real number is likely much higher, however.
Nationally, 72 percent of first-generation Latino adults in the U.S. speak Spanish as their primary language and about 30 percent cannot speak English well or at all, according to census statistics.
Arellano said many Latinos think they are too old to learn English as adults. But after seven weeks of vocabulary, sentence structure and pronunciation work, the class is shedding its inhibitions.
"They are losing a lot of fear. They are understanding that it's not impossible," Arellano said.
Part of the program's success is in making the class accessible and practical for adults. There are no textbooks and no course fee; students are merely asked to bring a notebook each Sunday and immerse themselves in American media and conversation in English during the week.
At one Sunday class, three children played in the back of the room, sometimes taking a seat next to their parents, who were learning to request and offer help.
By the end of the class, students warmed up to the sound of their voices in English. When Arellano put individuals on the spot, they answered his questions in self-assured, sometimes complex, sentences.
"The classes are great because when I'm able to ask about how to say things, I get the correct pronunciation," 30-year-old Juan Pablo Vega explained in Spanish.
Vega and his wife, Lydia, said they have been going to the English classes for several weeks, and have made a lot of progress.
"I've been practicing a lot at home and at work, especially with the Americans at work," Vega said in Spanish.
Because of the positive feedback the program has received, Arellano and Medcalf hope to attract more volunteers.
"We're in desperate need of an army of teachers," Arellano said. "I need more people to do what I'm doing in their own communities."
Published: June 26, 2006
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=89060&ntpid=0Copyright 2006 The Capital Times
